Over the last two years, as interest in stablecoins and real-world assets accelerated, a clear reality emerged: building compliant, scalable stablecoin yield products in-house is far more complex than many fintechs anticipated.

On the surface, the opportunity appears straightforward. Stablecoins offer global distribution and instant settlements, but often offer limited opportunities to earn stable, reliable, and uncapped yield on-chain. In traditional finance, yield is generated from portfolios of financial assets, such as fixed income instruments. OpenTrade bridges the gap between stablecoins and fiat, by enabling companies to earn and offer yield on stablecoins backed by real-world assets without the need to off-ramp.

Demand for stablecoin yield that offers attractive risk-adjusted returns continues to grow as consumers and companies, both established and emerging, continue adopting stablecoins as the alternative to fiat, especially in markets where traditional financial infrastructure is inaccessible, expensive, or unreliable. However, attempts to build a production-ready, institutional-grade stablecoin yield product in-house which incorporates stable, real-world asset-backed yield is where many fintech teams are faced with a multitude of challenges.


The challenges and complexities associated with building infrastructure in-house

Building stablecoin yield infrastructure that offers a diverse array of attractive returns presents a number of challenges. Teams must manage various stablecoin flows, manage liquidity across multiple venues and yield sources, and continuously monitor risk. For all of the above, teams must piece together data from a number of sources to cover reporting, reconciliation and transparency requirements. Each operational component must work reliably at scale and under regulatory guidelines, leading to compounding complexity.

In an in-house model, treasury management is often the first point of friction. Treasury teams are responsible for allocating capital across multiple yield providers and asset classes, onboarding and monitoring each counterparty, as well as tracking exposure and performance in real time. As the number of venues increases, so does operational risk. Fragmented systems and manual processes make reconciliation time-consuming and error-prone, limiting real-time visibility into treasury performance and risk exposure.   

Banking and financial institution relationships add another layer of complexity. The historical speculative nature of crypto has made these relationships difficult to establish and maintain for fintechs operating on-chain. Each institution brings its own compliance requirements, legacy systems, and onboarding processes. Risk assessments, legal reviews, and extensive operational approvals can take months, significantly delaying time to market before any capital is deployed. 

Legal and compliance further amplify this challenge. Running a stablecoin yield offering can be subject to rigorous KYC, AML, and risk framework requirements, which depend on the legal structure and mechanism of yield generation, and may vary by jurisdiction. Compliance demands continuous oversight and adaptability to shifts in local and global standards. It's clear to see that there’s significant long-term resourcing required to maintain this infrastructure.


How OpenTrade addresses these challenges 

OpenTrade was built on a simple belief: programmable, internet-native dollars and open financial infrastructure will change global finance when safely accessible at scale. OpenTrade seeks to make stablecoin yield exactly that by abstracting the challenges associated with building and maintaining stablecoin infrastructure through a single, institutional-grade platform. From a client’s perspective, the experience is fundamentally simpler. Onboarding is simple and centralised to a single straightforward process, replacing months of fragmented and complicated onboarding across multiple institutions. OpenTrade does not impose barriers to entry that fintechs are frequently met with elsewhere, such as minimum company size or deposit requirements.

Treasury teams gain access to high-quality yield sources backed by public and private real-world and DeFi assets through a single platform and trusted counterparty, without the operational burden of working with multiple processes and systems. OpenTrade’s infrastructure streamlines day-to-day treasury operations with advanced reporting capabilities, reducing both the time and risk associated with manual reconciliation across venues. Clients can easily view and download their live and historical balances, transactions, and associated data across all products.

Lastly, by removing the need for stablecoin on/off ramps and eliminating transaction fees and minimum deposit requirements, OpenTrade reduces friction and costs, enabling teams to go-to-market faster and scale stablecoin yield with confidence.

Access to various solutions in one platform

OpenTrade offers seamless access to a range of stablecoin yield solutions tailored to meet the diverse needs of various company profiles and users. Through OpenTrade’s FCA-regulated asset manager and its network of brokers and issuers, OpenTrade can originate virtually any real-world asset to back its product suite - with no additional onboarding requirements imposed on our clients and their users.

The platform makes it easy to tailor products to clients’ objectives, whether they prioritise low risk and liquidity, seek higher returns through diversified credit exposure or want access to a specific portfolio of yield strategies. We offer a variety of yield products for various risk profiles, liquidity requirements and yield aspirations using collateral portfolios composed of:

Public assets

• Money Market Funds

• Commercial Paper

• ETFs
  
  

Private assets

• Blue-chip private credit

• Supply chain finance

• Trade receivables
  
  

Crypto & DeFi

• Delta-neutral staking

• Blue-chip DeFi protocols
  
  

Building stablecoin yield infrastructure at scale quickly becomes slow and expensive, driven by lengthy onboarding, managing a multitude of counterparties, fragmented systems, and time-consuming, error-prone reporting and reconciliation.

OpenTrade simplifies this with one onboarding, one platform, and curated yield access through a single counterparty - resulting in a cheaper, faster path to go-live with minimal operational burden, so teams can focus on product and users while scaling.